Map of Forbidden Books | Arlington Public Library

1) The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian

Author

Alexie, Sherman

Notes

One of the most banned and challenged book in school districts in the USA

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences,...

2) The alchemist

Author

Coelho, Paulo

Notes

All of Paulo Coelho's books are banned in Iran

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky." Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half

...

3) All the rivers: a novel

Author

Rabinyan, Dorit

Notes

Cannot be taught in high school literature classes in Israel.

Description

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"A controversial, award-winning story about the passionate but untenable affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, from one of Israel's most acclaimed novelists. When Liat meets Hilmi on a blustery autumn afternoon in Greenwich Village, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Charismatic and handsome, Hilmi is a talented young artist from Palestine. Liat, an aspiring translation student, plans to return to Israel the following summer....

4) American psycho

Author

Ellis, Bret Easton

Notes

Banned in Queensland, Australia. In other parts of Australia, it has to be shrink wrapped and can only be sold to adults.

Formats:

Book, eBook

Description

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In a black satire of the eighties, a decade of naked greed and unparalleled callousness, a successful Wall Street yuppie cannot get enough of anything, including murder. Now a major motion picture from Lion's Gate Films, released Spring 2000, starring Christian Bale (Metroland), Chloe Sevigny (The Last Days of Disco), Jared Leto (My So Called Life), and Reese Witherspoon (Cruel Intentions), and directed by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol). In American...

5) Animal farm: a fairy story

Author

Orwell, George

Notes

Banned in the United Arab Emirates

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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Orwell's 1945 fable about the power struggles among animals on a farm parallels the situation in Russia at the time as Orwell saw it; the characters include the ruthless pig Stalin, his idealistic Trotsky-like adversary, and the simple, kindly horse who represents the common man. All animals are equals but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is the account of the bold struggle, initiated...

6) Bad samaritans: the myth of free trade and the secret history of capitalism

Author

Chang, Ha-Joon

Notes

Banned in South Korean for all military members and bases

7) The Holy Bible

Notes

Only Christians are allowed to own the Bible in Libya. Banned in The Maldives and North Korea.

8) Un día en la vida

Author

Argueta, Manlio

Series

Biblioteca básica de literatura salvadoreña volume 26

Notes

Banned in El Salvador

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD

Description

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Set in Chalatenango, El Salvador, the novel follows the daily life of Guadalupe Guardado and the women of her family just prior to the Salvadoran Civil War. The book was banned by the government of El Salvador after its 1980 release for its descriptions of human rights violations by the Organizacioń Democrática Nacionalista, the government's paramilitary intelligence organization.

9) Fifty shades of Grey

Author

James, E L

Series

Fifty shades trilogy volume 1

Notes

Entire series banned in Malaysia

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Large Type

Description

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Originally published: Waxahachie, Tex. : Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House, 2011. When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind -- until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time.

10) The German girl

Author

Correa, Armando Lucas

Notes

Banned for import into Cuba

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, Large Type

Description

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Before everything changed, young Hannah Rosenthal lived a charmed life. But now, in 1939, the streets of Berlin are draped with red, white, and black flags; her family's fine possessions are hauled away; and they are no longer welcome in the places that once felt like home. Hannah and her best friend, Leo Martin, make a pact: whatever the future has in store for them, they'll meet it together. Hope appears in the form of the SS St. Louis , a transatlantic...

11) Half of a yellow sun

Author

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi

Notes

Formerly banned in Nigeria

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor's beautiful...

12) The house of the spirits

Author

Allende, Isabel

Notes

Banned in Chile

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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A best seller and critical success all over the world, The House of the Spirits is the magnificent epic of the Trueba family -- their loves, their ambitions, their spiritual quests, their relations with one another, and their participation in the history of their times, a history that becomes destiny and overtakes them all.

13) Into the river

Author

Dawe, Ted

Notes

Formerly banned in New Zealand

Description

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Wanting more than the Maori customs and rituals provide Te Arepa believes his prayers are answered when he is awarded a scholarship to a boarding school across the country.

14) Killing commendatore: a novel

Author

Murakami, Haruki

Notes

In Hong Kong, it must be wrapped and only sold to adults.

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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"In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman...

15) Little Blue And Little Yellow A Story For Pippo An

This entry no longer exists in the catalog

16) Lolita

Author

Nabokov, Vladimir

Series

Vintage International

Notes

Banned in Argentina

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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Awe and exhiliration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination,...

17) Mein Kampf

Author

Hitler, Adolf

Notes

Banned in Austria

Description

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Hitler's famous prison writings of 1923--the bible of national socialism and the blueprint for the Third Reich. Features a new Introduction by John Lukacs, author of "The Hitler of History.

18) My fathers' daughter: a story of family and belonging

Author

Pool, Hannah

Notes

Banned in Eritrea

19) The satanic verses: a novel

Author

Rushdie, Salman

Notes

Banned in several countries including Kenya, Kuwait, and Liberia

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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A hijacked jumbo jet bound for London blows apart high above the English Channel. Two figures, Indian actors of opposing sensibilities, Gibreel and Saladin, fall to Earth, and are washed up on an English beach. Soon curious changes occur -Gibreel seems to have acquired a halo, while Saladin grows hooves and bumps at his temples. They are transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is the initial act in an odyssey that merges...

20) Schindler's list

Author

Keneally, Thomas

Notes

Banned in Lebanon